Wine enthusiasts can now indulge their passion and back the right to
bear arms at the same time by joining the National Rifle Association of
America's Wine Club.

‘Now you can support the 2nd Amendment with every wine you buy’ runs the
strapline on the homepage of the club, nrawineclub.com, which also
offers new members a ‘nine-piece custom NRA engraved wine box’ when they
join.

Just when you though the NRA couldn't get any crazier, they prove you wrong again.

Apart from religion, more Americans appear to be nuts on the subject
of guns than all other topics. The National Rifle Association has raised
and spent millions in recent years peddling scare stories about
President Obama’s secret plan to abolish the Second Amendment,
confiscate everybody’s deer rifles and set up a gun-free dictatorship.

Newtown conspiracy theories are only incrementally
madder spinoffs of the NRA’s master narrative. Yet its leaders are
treated as VIPs in newsrooms and TV studios. Why?

Hence conversations with gun cultists tend to be
conducted in the dualistic, all-or-nothing terms of fundamentalist
theology. Although polls have shown that large majorities of gun owners
favor measures such as improved background checks to make it harder for
criminals and severely mentally ill people to acquire deadly weapons,
cultists see all such legislation in apocalyptic terms. Any regulation
amounts to total confiscation.

Somehow, the most hysterical voices against gun safety equate our
duly elected leaders with tyranny. Because President Barack Obama thinks
guns should be "well-regulated," he's become their enemy. For their
most devoted defenders, guns have become a reflexive right. We have the
right to own guns so we can have guns in case someone wants to regulate
your guns.

The point of having guns isn't to have guns. We have guns to protect
our selves and to hunt, but the reason they are constitutionally
protected is to ensure "the security of a free state."

There's a word for those who would take up arms against our
government, and it's not "patriots." If you have a gun to protect
yourself against someone regulating your gun, then what you love isn't
America, or freedom, but your gun.

A friend of mine fought in Iraq with the 101st Airborne. He says, "If
people want to play with guns that badly, let them join the Army,"
which, when you think about it, is one kind of a well-regulated militia.

One of the National
Rifle Association's senior lobbyists said an ad by the nation's leading
gun-rights group after a school shooting in Connecticut that refers to
President Barack Obama's children was "ill-advised."

Jim Baker, head of the
federal affairs division at the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action,
said he had made his views known to others at the powerful gun-rights
organization.

The ad, which cast Obama
as hypocritical for having expressed skepticism about putting armed
guards in schools, when "his kids are protected by armed guards at their
schools," drew widespread criticism when it first became public on
January 15.

"I don't think it was
particularly helpful, that ad," Baker told Reuters in a telephone
interview. "I thought it ill-advised."

Too bad the level-headed NRA board members are outnumbered by the extremists.

The White House has called
the NRA ad "repugnant and cowardly," while New Jersey Governor Chris
Christie said it was "reprehensible" and undermined the NRA's
credibility by bringing the president's children into the debate.
Christie is considered a possible Republican presidential contender in
2016.

Susan Eisenhower, the
daughter of the late President Dwight Eisenhower who had Secret Service
protection as a child, wrote in the Washington Post that she was
"disgusted" by the ad.

The NRA's president, David
Keene, objected to the White House criticism earlier this month, saying
"We didn't name the president's daughters ... What we said is that
these are people who think that their families deserve protection that
yours don't."

Friday, January 25, 2013

The complaint states that the girl and Bartashevitch were arguing at their residence on Jan. 13 about her grades in school. She was getting two Bs in school instead of two As. He swore at the girl, who then told him she hated him, and he grabbed a recently purchased AK-47 and pointed it at her.According to the complaint, he bought the rifle because he knew it would soon be banned. The girl’s mother jumped between them when he pointed the gun, and the girl was eventually ordered to go to her room by Bartashevitch.The girl’s mother told police that when she intervened, Bartasevitch threw her to the floor and that he pointed the gun at both of them, the complaint states.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said Sunday that the “gun show loophole”
doesn’t exist, pushing back against gun control advocates’ call for
background checks in all guns sales.

“You know, there actually isn’t the so-called ‘gun show loophole,’”
Cruz, a gun-rights advocate, said on NBC News’s “Meet The Press.” “That
doesn’t exist. Any licensed firearm dealer who sells at a gun show has
to have a background check. It’s a requirement that applies to every
licensed firearm dealer. What it doesn’t apply to is personal sales one
on one. And that’s true whether it’s at a gun show or not.”

President Obama unveiled a sweeping slate of gun control proposals
last week, including a call for Congress to pass a law requiring
universal background checks for gun sales, including those between
private citizens that don’t involve licensed gun dealers, which are
currently not subject to checks.Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a leading gun control advocate, said on
the same program that the proposal to require universal background
checks “is the sweet spot in terms of actually making us safer and
having a good chance of passing.”

If I were a gun-rights fanatic, I'd fight against this tooth and nail too. I might even pretend to not understand what the gun show loophole actually means and thereby render the discussion as tedious as possible.The alternative is to admit that once we have universal background checks, licensing and registration are right around the corner. Nothing short of a comprehensive and complete approach to gun control will have the desired effect.

In his nationwide effort for tighter gun control, Mayor Michael
Bloomberg attributes historic crime lows in New York to strict gun laws
that are strictly enforced.

"If we are serious about protecting lives,"
he wrote in a recent newspaper editorial, "we have to get serious about
enforcing our laws."

The National Rifle Association has dismissed Bloomberg's anti-gun
campaign over the years as a publicity stunt and said last week that
tighter laws would have no effect on public safety and crime.But leading criminologists around the country say Bloomberg is right,
for the most part. While acknowledging policing isn't the only factor
in reducing gun violence, they cite the all-time low number of slayings
in a city where most people are killed with guns.

It's interesting that the gun-rights folks say exactly the opposite. What do you think?

Are you looking
into buying an assault weapon for protection after a devastating natural
disaster (or the coming Zombie Apocalypse) plunges society into deadly
anarchy? You’ve got it all wrong, Vice President Joe Biden said
Thursday: Get yourself a shotgun.

Biden, doing a Google+ “hangout”
to promote President Barack Obama’s proposals for battling gun violence,
had been asked whether a new assault weapons ban might infringe on the
Second Amendment rights of those who want one “as a last line of
defense” to fend off looters after “some terrible natural disaster.”

“Guess what? A shotgun will keep
you a lot safer, a double-barreled shotgun, than the assault weapon in
somebody’s hands [who] doesn’t know how to use it, even one who does
know how to use it,” the outspoken vice president, a shotgun owner
himself, replied. “It’s harder to use an assault weapon to hit something
than it is a shotgun. You want to keep people away in an earthquake?
Buy some shotgun shells.”

Does that sound reasonable to you? A shotgun would be easier to aim and fire effectively, wouldn't it?

Thursday, January 24, 2013

You might think the Deep South is the biggest source of the firearms in the hands of Chicago’s criminals.

Maybe you heard about the less-restrictive gun
laws in the South or the high-profile cases the feds have brought
against gun traffickers moving weapons from Mississippi and other states
to Chicago — the Dixie pipeline.

But the truth is most guns recovered in crimes here were originally bought in Illinois.

More specifically, in Cook County.

And the No. 1 supplier of those weapons is just a short drive from Chicago, Chuck’s Gun Store in south suburban Riverdale.

From 2008 to March 2012, the police successfully
traced the ownership of 1,375 guns recovered in crimes in Chicago within
a year of their purchase.

Of those guns, 268 were bought at Chuck’s — nearly one in five.

That statistic comes from a groundbreaking study by
University of Chicago Crime Lab researchers, done at the request of the
Chicago Police Department, which is grappling with an extra-violent
2012 that has seen a 28 percent spike in the city’s homicide total
compared to this time last year.

In their study, U. of C. researchers combed through
gun-trace data to determine the weapons most likely bought by straw
purchasers.

Those are people without criminal records who buy guns for felons — often at a hefty markup.

Fifty-eight percent of those recovered guns were
bought in Illinois. About 19 percent were purchased in Indiana, 3
percent in Wisconsin — and less than 2 percent in Mississippi.

Cook County was the source of 45 percent of the guns over that period, according to the crime lab’s study.

I used to say the guns probably came from Indiana, but this is fantastic. I'm sure many of the same guys who repeatedly refer to Chicago as proof that gun control fails, knew damn well where those guns come from but just weren't sayin'.

So there is this device that is in widespread use -- almost every
family has at least one. Used carelessly or incorrectly it can do damage
or even create lethal effects. It is often used in the commission of
crimes, and theft of the device itself is a common crime.

This device must be registered -- anyone who wishes to own one has to
give personal information and obtain insurance against its misuse. The
owner is required to display evidence of registration prominently, and
every device has a unique identification number so even if it is found
without the evidence of registration, the owner can be identified and
located. Further, even non-owners of the device must be licensed if they
wish to use one. The licensing involves extensive testing on knowledge
of the rules for operating the device and practical operation of the
device under real-world conditions.

If a used device is sold, the sale must be registered with the
government and the buyer is subject to all the above requirements. If
the device is retired or destroyed, its registration must be cancelled.Improper or illegal operation of the device can result in revocation
of the operator's license, confiscation of their registration, and
cancellation of their insurance.

Notwithstanding all this, there is almost no resistance to the
registration, licensing, and insurance requirements. Registration and
license fees provide significant revenue to government agencies, and
insurance provides a substantial private market as well. To date no
government has undertaken a mass confiscation of these devices, nor has
their use been significantly restricted -- in fact there are more of
these devices in private ownership than at any time in history.

I suspect you've figured out by now that the device in question is
motor vehicles -- cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc. If someone proposed
the above set of requirements for gun ownership, however, the outcry
from the NRA and its disciples would be loud and long.

End the congressional ban upon studies of gun safety, urge 100 scientists from major universities.

While mortality rates from almost every
major cause of death declined dramatically over the past half century,
the homicide rate in America today is almost exactly the same as it was
in 1950," the academics wrote in a letter organized by scholars at the
University of Chicago Crime Lab research center.

"Politically-motivated constraints" left
the nation "muddling through" a problem that costs American society on
the order of $100 billion per year, it said. The federal Centers for
Disease Control has cut firearms safety research by 96 percent since the
mid-1990s, according to one estimate. Congress, pushed by the gun
lobby, in 1996 put restrictions on CDC funding of gun research into the
budget. Restrictions on other agencies were added in later years.

Just as a general rule: if you're the side shutting down scientific investigation, then you're the side that's in the wrong.

A 22-year-old man has been charged in the shootings at a Houston-area
community college campus that left him and two others wounded.

A statement from the Harris County Sheriff's Office identifies the
suspect as Carlton Berry. Spokesman Alan Bernstein says Berry is charged
with aggravated assault but remains hospitalized with wounds suffered
in the shooting.

It seems he was another lawful gun owner gone bad. I wonder if anyone checked to see if he had a concealed carry permit. What do you think?

Kansas City police have disclosed the death of a 4-year-old girl who
was shot in the head earlier this month by a 6-year-old boy.

Police said Tuesday that preschooler Trinity Ross was taken off life
support last week, seven days after the accidental shooting.

The Kansas City Star reports
an adult had briefly left the preschooler and two boys, ages 5 and 6,
alone in the living room of Trinity’s home when the older boy found a
gun on a chair. The adult heard a gunshot and found Trinity on the floor
with a wound in her forehead.

Police said the older boy apparently found the five-shot revolver
under a jacket. The adult said it belonged to a relative of the boys.

No charges have been filed.

We can only assume the idiot adult who was in charge of these children was a lawful gun owner otherwise charges would have been filed. When ex-cons and felons in possession of firearms do this kind of thing they go to jail. Not so for lawful gun owners in many cases.

Wake County's district attorney says he can find nothing to indicate laws were broken in an accidental shooting at a gun show.

District Attorney Colon Willoughby said Tuesday that no charges
will be filed against 36-year-old Gary Lynn Wilson of Wilmington.

State Fairgrounds Police Chief Joel Keith said a
12-gauge shotgun discharged while its owner removed it from its case at a
security checkpoint at the Dixie Gun and Knife Show last Saturday. A
retired sheriff's deputy and two bystanders were hurt.

Wilson brought the weapon to the show to find a private buyer. The shooting prompted organizers to close for the rest of the day, but the show reopened Sunday without private gun sales.

It was one of three accidental shootings at gun shows across the U.S. last Saturday.

Gun rights fanatics love to accuse us of "fearing inanimate objects" or "blaming the gun," but when it serves their purpose of treating gun negligence nonchalantly, they don't mind blaming the gun one bit themselves. Case in point: "a
12-gauge shotgun discharged."
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

The shooting spree began shortly around 1 a.m. on Sunday, when Griego
snuck into his parents' bedroom while his mother, Sara Griego, was
asleep. There he raided the closet where the family kept their guns, and
immediately used a .22 rifle to kill her, according to the Bernalillo
County Sheriff's Department.

Griego's 9-year-old brother was sleeping with his mother at the time and
woke up. When Griego told the boy his mother was dead, the youngster
didn't believe him, according to a police report.

"So Nehemiah picked up his mother's head to show his brother her bloody
face," the report states. "Nehemiah stated his brother became so upset
so he shot his brother in the head."

He then went into his sisters' bedroom. "Nehemiah stated when he entered
he noticed that his sisters were crying and he shot them in the head,"
the police report states. The girls were 5 and 2 years old.

The teenager waited for his father to come from his overnight shift
working at a nearby rescue mission. When his father, Greg Griego, walked
into the home around 5 a.m., unaware of what had taken place, Griego
shot him multiple times with the AR-15 rifle.

His excuse: frustrated with his mother. His passion: video games like Grand Theft Auto. Gun availability: high - bedroom closet.

In the roiling national set-to over whether guns would make schools
safer, most of the debate has been a caricature of itself. One side
wants to install guns in every school, and the other wants to banish
them. “I wish to God [the principal] had had an M-4 in her office,
locked up,” Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas
said on Fox News after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, “so when
she heard gunfire, she pulls it out … and takes his head off before he
can kill those precious kids.”But the research on actual gunfights, the kind that happen not in a
politician’s head but in fluorescent-lit stairwells and strip-mall
restaurants around America, reveals something surprising. Winning a
gunfight without shooting innocent people typically requires realistic,
expensive training and a special kind of person, a fact that has been
strangely absent in all the back-and-forth about assault-weapon bans and
the Second Amendment.

This is a fascinating analysis of the phenomenon of a gunfight.What do you think?

A maintenance worker was wounded in the crossfire
during a shooting at a Texas community college on Tuesday, school and
police officials say.

The shooting on Lone Star College's North Harris campus began when an
altercation involving two individuals escalated shortly before 1 p.m.
local time, according to police. The maintenance worker suffered
multiple gunshot wounds and is listed in serious condition. A second
victim, thought to be a student, suffered an apparent heart attack
during the incident. Both victims were conscious when they arrived at
the hospital, officials said.One of the suspects was taken into custody at the scene, while a
second fled the campus on foot. According to a Harris County Sheriff's
Maj. Armando Tello, five law enforcement agencies searched a wooded area
near the school, where the second suspect was taken into custody. Both
suspects, whose names were not released, were also wounded. Charges have
yet to be filed.

In a rousing
Second Inaugural Address yesterday—reiminiscent at times of the rhetoric
and idealism of Martin Luther King, Jr.—President Obama reminded the
nation that there is work to be done to build a safer America. In his words, "Our journey is not complete until all of our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newton, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm."

The President
refuses to give up on the issue of gun violence prevention and we must
follow his lead. "You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape
the debates of our time," he said yesterday, "not only with the votes we
cast, but with the voices we lift."

Shape the debate over gun violence. Lift your voice.

Get calls in to your Members of Congress at (202) 224-3121. [To find out who your Members are, click here.]Tell them you want to see them take immediate
action to approve the package of gun policy proposals President Obama
unveiled on January 16th. Critical reforms like universal background
checks on all gun sales and a renewal of the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.

And don't
take 'No' for an answer. Like the President said, "If they say 'No,'
ask them why not. Ask them what’s more important—doing whatever it
takes to get a 'A' grade from the gun lobby that funds their campaigns,
or giving parents some peace of mind when they drop their child off for
first grade?"

Thank you
for working with the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence at this historic
moment. I honestly believe we are on the path to a beautiful future for
our country. Let's work together to get there, and soon.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Here is a revolver.It has an amazing language all its own.It delivers unmistakable ultimatums. It is the last word.A simple, little human forefinger can tell a terrible story with it.Hunger, fear, revenge, robbery hide behind it.It is the claw of the jungle made quick and powerful.It is the club of the savage turned to magnificent precision.It is more rapid than any judge or court of law.It is less subtle and treacherous than any one lawyer or ten.When it has spoken, the case can not
be appealed to the supreme court, nor any mandamus nor any injunction
nor any stay of execution in and interfere with the original purpose.And
nothing in human philosophy persists more strangely than the old belief
that God is always on the side of those who have the most revolvers.

The National Rifle Association recently linked
violent movies to gun deaths. Therefore, I feel perfectly confident in
assuming that the reason gun deaths have declined so dramatically in
Australia since 1996 is that the country must have banned violent
movies. In fact, I suspect that all you can see is Disney stuff,
musicals and documentaries on crocodiles.

However, Aussies watch the
same movies as Americans. The real reason gun-related deaths have fallen
dramatically in Australia since 1996 is that it banned assault rifles,
implemented other gun controls and undertook a gun buyback.

The gun homicide rate in Australia is about one-thirtieth of that in the United States.

During each of the past ten years, an average of 32,000 people died from
the flu. This certainly qualifies influenza as a major threat to public
health. The federal government has responded in kind, spending
approximately $430 million on flu research, vaccinations, and education
every year. Given this high fatality rate, it's hard to imagine anyone
arguing that such funding is undeserved.
What if there were a second public health threat that killed an equal
number of Americans each year, but instead of combating it, Congress
explicitly banned research into its causes?
This seems absurd and irresponsible, but it is exactly what happened
nearly two decades ago with research on gun violence. In 1996
Republicans in Congress imposed a ban on federal funding to support
research into the underlying causes and prevention of gun violence,
which kills more than 30,000 Americans a year.
This is why when Congress reconvenes after the presidential
inauguration, House Republicans should immediately bring President
Obama's gun safety plan to a vote.
In the same way that research into motor vehicle accidents led to safer
cars and a dramatic reduction in traffic fatalities, scientists at the
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) should study gun violence as the
public health crisis that it is. But the National Rifle Association
protested when the CDC, prior to the ban, determined that homes with
guns had a significantly greater risk of gun-related homicide and
suicide than those without firearms present.

It makes perfect sense that the NRA and their fanatical adherents would want to prevent these types of studies. What do you think?

The White House says the figure comes from a 1997 Institute of Justice report, written by Philip Cook of Duke University and Jens Ludwig
of the University of Chicago. This study is based on data collected
from a survey in 1994, just the Brady law requirements for background
checks was coming into effect. (In fact, the questions concerned
purchases in 1993 and 1994, while Brady law went into effect in early
1994.) In other words, this is a really old figure.

The data is available for researchers to explore at the Interuniversity consortium on political and social research
(ICPSR) at the University of Michigan. Digging deeper, we find that the
survey sample was just 251 people. (The survey was done by telephone,
using a random-digit-dial method, with a response rate of 50 percent.)
With this sample size, the 95 percent confidence interval will be plus
or minus 6 percentage points.

Moreover, when asked if he or she
bought from a licensed firearms dealer, the possible answers included
“probably was/think so” and “probably not,” leaving open the possibility
the purchaser was mistaken. (The “probably not” answers were counted as
“no.”)

When all of the “yes” and “probably was” answers were
added together, that left 35.7 percent of respondents indicating they
did not receive the gun from a licensed firearms dealer. Rounding up
gets you to 40 percent, though as we noted the survey sample is so small
it could also be rounded down to 30 percent.

You can round it down to 20% and the argument for universal background checks is still strong. Why would anyone who is honest and legitimate oppose this?

Monday, January 21, 2013

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Police went to Chad Moretz's home to ask him about a friend who had gone missing and quickly found themselves in a tense standoff when a relative answered the door and whispered: "He's got a rifle. He's going to kill y'all."

It was at least the fourth time in 18 months deputies had gone to see Moretz. Neighbors and relatives had accused him of chasing his wife with a machete, threatening to kill a man with a handgun and stabbing a dog with a pocket knife. But none of that prepared investigators for what they found Jan. 11 after Moretz walked onto his front porch with an assault rifle and was killed by a SWAT team sniper.

Inside the home, amid filth and roaches and foul odors, police found the missing man's severed head and two hands hidden behind a kitchen cabinet inside a hole in the wall. The rest of the body, dismembered by a power saw and wrapped in bags, was discovered in a storage locker a half-hour away in neighboring South Carolina.

A Nevada lawmaker was arrested on Saturday night for threatening to shoot a colleague.According to the Las Vegas Sun, State Assemblyman Steven Brooks
was arrested with a loaded gun. He had threatened to shoot
Speaker-elect Marilyn Kirkpatrick. He was apparently unhappy with his
committee assignments.He spent the night in custody. Brooks is a Democratic assemblyman who represents North Las Vegas. He was first elected in 2010.

As the Sun reported,
the Nevada State Assembly recently experienced a shakeup after its
previous speaker had lost his bid for reelection. The Democratic caucus
was split between Kirkpatrick and another official. Brooks had
reportedly been seeking the spot of chairman of the Assembly's Ways and
Means Committee, but the position went to another lawmaker.

What do you think of that, a black Democrat threatening to shoot people?

ThinkProgress reported
last week that Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal (R) was forced to
apologize to First Lady Michelle Obama after forwarding an email to
fellow lawmakers that called her “Mrs. YoMama” and compared her to the
Grinch.

Earlier that same week, the Lawrence Journal-World was sent another email
that O’Neal had forwarded to House Republicans that referred to
President Obama and a Bible verse that says “Let his days be few” and
calls for his children to be without a father and his wife to be
widowed.

Nick Sementelli at Faith in Public Life notes
that Psalm 109, which is a prayer for the death of a leader, became a
popular conservative meme after Obama’s election. The “tongue-in-cheek”
prayer for the president was seen on bumper stickers. The relevant part
of the psalm reads:

Let his days be few; and let another take his officeMay his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.

O’Neal forwarded the prayer with his own message: “At last — I can
honestly voice a Biblical prayer for our president! Look it up — it is
word for word! Let us all bow our heads and pray. Brothers and Sisters,
can I get an AMEN? AMEN!!!!!!”

As The Inquisitr reported earlier,
there has been a horrific shooting in Albuquerque, New Mexico that left
five people dead, including three young children between two and nine
years of age. According to friends who knew him, one of the victim’s was
Greg Griego, a popular local pastor, who was killed along with his wife
Sarah Griego, and three other members of his family.The shooter has now been identified by Sheriff’s spokesman Aaron Williamson
as 15-year-old Nehemiah Griego, the son of victim Greg Griego. The
young man was arrested and booked for two counts of murder and three
counts of child abuse resulting in death. All the victims received
multiple gunshot wounds.

Police also revealed the home where the victims were found belonged
to Greg and Sarah Griego. Greg Griego was the chaplain for the
Albuquerque Fire Department and established several prison ministries.
According to information in his biography, Greg Griego and his wife,
Sarah, had 10 children.

First of all, all those countries do not have 100% gun bans. That's a flat-out lie. Secondly, when compared to other 1st world countries and not places like Togo and Guinea, the US has a high murder rate. And finally, so what? What's the point? This is like saying that cigarettes and falling down the stairs kill more people than guns. What's the point, that we should do nothing about the guns deaths?

I noticed Hannity didn't ask the Senator to name the offensive executive orders. I imagine that's because none of them really smacks of legislation. As usual, in order to have an argument to make, the Republicans have to lie and exaggerate.

Of course they deny this has anything to do with racism, but to me they're full of it. Referring to the president as King Obama in that slightly Southern twang, to me, smacks of racism far more than Obama's mild suggestions smack of legislation.

8: New: OPPOSE: HB 2235, Delegate Lingamfelter, increases the penalties
for using a gun in a crime. This is a “feel good” measure that will not
make anyone any safer and it, yet again, villainizes guns. What this
bill says is that the penalty for a crime should be determined by the
tool the criminal uses. So, if a criminal uses a knife to murder
someone, that’s not a big deal. But if they use a gun to murder the same
person, then we’re really going to go after them! Why don’t we go after
them equally anytime they commit a murder or other violent crime? Dead
is dead and murder is murder, irrespective of the tool the murderer
uses.

The others are interesting too, but this one especially caught my eye. What do you think?

Sunday, January 20, 2013

The National Rifle Association is airing a television ad (and has on its website this four-minute video) that says the private school that President Obama’s daughters attend, Sidwell Friends School, has 11 armed guards. It doesn’t.

In fact, it has no armed guards. My Post colleague Glenn Kessler, who writes The Fact Checker column, wrote about the issue here and quoted Ellis Turner, associate head of Sidwell Friends, as saying: “Sidwell Friends security officers do not carry guns.”

This super-PAC—run by Lawrence Hunter, a Forbes columnist and ex-adviser to the Reagan White House—was influenced by the tea party and libertarian fixture
Rep. Ron Paul. Pet causes include raging against antidepressants as
deadly and dangerous and equating the president to Hitler and other
dictators:

Officials said the Dixie Gun and Knife Show
will continue Sunday without private gun sales after three people,
including a retired sheriff's deputy, were injured Saturday when a gun
brought in by a patron who planned to sell it accidentally discharged.A
man identified as Gary Lynn Wilson, 36, of Wilmington, brought the
12-gauge shotgun to the show at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds and
was attempting to remove it from its case when the weapon went off
shortly after 1 p.m., police said.The show, which is held inside the Jim Graham Building, closed for
the remainder of the day but will continue Sunday without private gun
sales. Authorities said no personal guns will be allowed on the
property. Only guns sold by licensed dealers and vendors will be
allowed.The ban is in place for Sunday, the last day of the
show, but won't necessarily be permanent, Keith said. Officials said
they will review procedures to determine whether any changes need to be
made.The Dixie Gun and Knife Show has taken place at the
fairgrounds for more than 30 years with an excellent track record for
safety, officials said.

What do you think? That's an interesting response to the problem, isn't it?

Accidental shootings at gun shows in North Carolina, Indiana and Ohio
left five people injured Saturday, the same day that thousands of gun
advocates gathered peacefully at state capitals around the U.S. to rally
against stricter firearm limits.

At the Dixie Gun and Knife Show in Raleigh, a 12-gauge shotgun
discharged as its owner unzipped its case for a law enforcement officer
to check at a security entrance, injuring three people, state
Agriculture Department spokesman Brian Long said.In Indianapolis, police said a 54-year-old man was injured when he inadvertently shot himself while leaving a gun show.

Emory
L. Cozee was loading his .45-caliber semi-automatic when he shot
himself in the hand as he was leaving the Indy 1500 Gun and Knife show
at the state fairgrounds, state police said. Loaded personal weapons
aren't allowed inside the show.

And in Ohio, a gun dealer in Medina was checking out a semi-automatic
handgun he had bought Saturday when he accidentally pulled the trigger,
injuring his friend, police said. The gun's magazine had been removed
from the firearm, but one round remained in the chamber, police said.

These incidents of gross negligence will probably be treated with the usual nonchalance.

Pro-gun activists who say the right to own firearms is under attack from
President Barack Obama's proposals to reduce gun violence held "high
noon" rallies across the United States on Saturday in support of gun
ownership rights.

Not only did these loyal gun owners have a chance to express their love of guns and hate of Obama, based on paranoia and racism, respectively, but they had the extra benefit, thanks to the organizers, of saying a big "fuck you" to the Martin Luther King celebrants.

In the photo above, which is the Guns Across America pro-gun rally at the State Capitol in Albany, New York, women don't seem to be properly represented, in spite of all the claims to the contrary, and blacks are totally absent. This is a movement of middle-aged, angry, white men.